


The World Spinning Waves

by ohmyohpioneer



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 17:52:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1356550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyohpioneer/pseuds/ohmyohpioneer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma struggles with happiness, and Robin Hood is there to offer some perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Spinning Waves

**Author's Note:**

> (I had a mighty need for not only Captain Swan, but some Emma and Robin friendship/bromance.)

The castle ceiling, she thinks, is too high. Lofty and lonely.

He presses fragile words into her hair. “You were swimming.”

She doesn’t say anything when he leaves a weighty silence in wake of his admission.

“It was nighttime and the moon was in the sky and you were swimming.”

Her eyes are mapping the contours of his brow, his jaw, in a concentrated effort to keep the whole world from collapsing. She’s been breathing and moving and carrying on without a moment’s pause for months, and now that everything has gone still, the inertia of the lost year is pressing against her.

_He’s_ pressing against her.

“That’s when she’s calm, the sea,” he places each word delicately against her collarbone, to sink into the place beneath her breast, “When her waters are _still_ and _magic_.”

The timber of his voice is vibrating her being, and she can feel a tremble emanating from her heart to her fingertips, her toes, the end of her nose; faint tremors and quakes creating faults as he kisses the hollow of her throat.

“And you were happy, love,” he is hovering above her – dark eyes, darker brow, “In all of the memories I made for you – for myself – you were _happy_.”

There’s a pang in her heart and she’s not sure how she’ll ever fix him if she can’t fix herself.

“And the lad, too,” his lips brushing her ear. “You drank your chocolate drinks on winter mornings. On summer nights you looked up at the same stars as I did – finding the bears and the swans and the gods. You laughed.”

Here he pauses. “Please tell me you were happy.”

She wills her body to nod. “Yeah,” throat tight and aching. “Yes, we were happy.”

His broken smile radiates against the crown of her head. “Good.”

Emma doesn’t know how to take this; she’s never had anything so frustratingly unconditional – not even in the second life afforded her by Regina. It’s unbearably light.

She brings her lips to his, burying her nose in his cheek, her fingers in his hair. She breathes in deeply as the air escapes his lungs and it’s all she can do to seize greedily the last vestiges of space between them.

“I was happy,” she grasps his hand from it’s place on her jaw and roughly moves it down to the gap where her tunic and pants part, pushing his calloused palm, fingertips against her ribs. “I just want to be happy again.”

He stills. “ _Love._ ” It’s one word, it’s thousands.

She doesn’t move her mouth from his, traces her plea against his ragged exhales, “ _Please_.”

His eyes shine, and she knows this is unfair on so many levels, but she needs to be selfish just this once. He’s the only one who ever allows her to be selfish.

His kiss, as his hand slowly slides the leather pants down her legs, is a benediction, an acquiescence, a confession – and the world rains down around her.

\---

The fire crackling in the hearth is casting maroon shadows across Hook’s brow and chest when she wakes. All is quiet and still, and for one blissful, terrifying moment, Emma forgets where she is.

She lifts herself from the bed, practiced movements of escape, shifts and counterbalances that leave few physical waves in their wake, but deepening marks somewhere she’d rather ignore.

She’s finally getting used to the traveling clothing she’s been all but living in the past few weeks, she notes absently while dressing, and it’s enough to distract her from the sigh of sheets as Hook shifts in his sleep.

It’s still the dead of night when she slips into the hallway, and silver moonlight splashes the floor. Emma walks past her bedroom door – it’s not like she’ll be able to sleep – and strides purposefully to the twisting stairs at the end of the passage.

A floor down, she meanders past the open library door, which is throwing light into the hallway.

“Emma?”

She’s startled by the voice.

“Robin?”

He’s sitting, elbows on knees, in a great wingback chair with a tumbler of amber liquid dangling from his fingers, facing a roaring blaze.

He gives her a warm smile, and makes a gesture with his glass, “Care for a drink, m’lady?”

All of the fight leaves her as she enters the room and collapses in the chair mirroring Robin’s, “Hell. Yes.”

His laugh is full but soft, and Emma thinks idly that it’s nice to have a friend – pure and simple – on this journey. They sit in the cackling hush nursing their drinks for some time before Robin speaks. “I imagine you didn’t come here for a late night read?”

She snorts indelicately. “Somehow I don’t think Moby Dick is going to help me.”

His eyebrows furrow, “I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest what you mean.”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

He leans back, slouching in his seat like a king resting comfortably on his throne. “Ah. Yes. I am familiar with the sensation,” he stares deeply into his glass. “My lifestyle has always afforded me time with my family. I don’t care for being separated from my son for so long a stay.”

Emma nods, and worries not for the first time that day about Henry’s wellbeing; his safety, how he’s adjusting and readjusting to his life now that he occupies two worlds – body and mind. She sips deeply, letting the liquor burn her throat, soothe her shaking hands.

“But what troubles you this evening, Emma?”

Despite being comfortable in the archer’s presence, Emma’s not willing to sacrifice any guarded fragments of herself. And she realizes the impossible predicament she’s in – unwilling to unfold herself to anyone but Killian, while finding herself completely unable to do precisely that.

But Robin doesn’t seem bothered by her silence, merely assessing her with a level gaze before turning to the mantle. Just as Emma is about to stand, excuse herself from the quiet that is now this shade of awkward, he speaks, staring into the fire. 

“My late wife, Marian, was a kind soul – far gentler than I deserved, perhaps too gentle for the likes of me,” his voice is delicate and musing, like he’s made this address to the ghosts, the air, numerous times before.

“She was ill for much of our marriage, and I’m afraid I wasted so much of our time lamenting our fortune and cursing our circumstances that I missed the moments when we were well and truly happy," he breathes. "My whole life I’ve stolen from those with riches to bring happiness to those with none, and I couldn’t pause to rejoice in my own wealth.”

He drinks deeply, pauses, and Emma is not sure if – or how – she is supposed to reply to his words. But on the edge of a heavy sigh, he continues, turning to lock eyes with her.

“The mistake, Emma, is not choosing the wrong path, but worrying about that which may never come to pass. It wasn’t until after Marian was gone that I realized I had lived our entire marriage – our _life_ – in the future, while she had suffered, alone, in the present.”

His voice is only slightly louder than a whisper, and it’s a gravity and earnestness she hasn’t seen in his playful nature. “If you can find happiness now, Emma, _take it_. There is no shame in that.”

She’s slightly bewildered, like she’s a deer caught in his crosshairs.

He stands, setting down his glass, and places a steady hand on her shoulder as he leaves the room. “Goodnight, Emma. I hope sleep finds you.”

\---

The rise and fall of his chest as she approaches the bed is entire earths moving, and for a moment none of this is real; it’s another cursed year of conjured atoms and chimerical being.

But when she aligns herself next to him, when she strips free of the cloth and hide and doubt, the reverence that settles into her bones is more real than the beat of her own heart.

He stirs, a drowsy movement toward her, and he folds her into him. “You all right, Swan?”

“Yeah,” she grips his arm, “Yeah, just happy.”


End file.
